Amazon.co.uk Review
Larry Brown is the master of the raw and the sparse, and of bringing Mississippi to the world in a language that is as stripped down and bare as Faulkner's is dense. Brown is at his best when he writes of the tensions between one screwed-up man and another, in this case a father and son. One has just been let out of prison, and he shouldn't have been. The other is drunk and disabled, and intends staying that way. To make things worse, there is a conflict with the sheriff, who is good and righteous but who tried to put the moves on the parolee's woman while he was in prison. To tell more would be to violate Brown's mastery of dialogue and of that which goes unspoken in this sly story of father, son and misery.
Product Description
Glen Davies has just been released from a three year stint in Parchman Penitentiary, Mississippi. Before he's been back in town 36 hours, he has browbeaten his younger brother, Puppy, threatened his father, renewed his sexual relations with Jewel, rejected his son and committed a cold-blooded rape.
From the Back Cover
Glen Davis, convicted and sentenced on a vehicular homicide charge, returns haunted, angry, drunken and dangerous to the small town in Mississippi where he grew up. Over the next five days he will threaten his father, renew his sexual relations with his lover Jewel, reject their illegitimate son, murder a bar owner and commit a cold-blooded rape. Bobby Blanchard is the sheriff - a quiet, moral man, secretly in love with Jewel and responsible for dealing with the chaos Glen leaves in his wake. In this powerful, unbearably suspenseful and compassionate novel, Larry Brown gives us a classic stand-off between good and evil as he explores the oldest themes in the book: love, hate, forgiveness and redemption.
About the Author
Larry Brown
Larry Brown was born in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1951. He is the recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and the 1992 Southern Book Critics' Circle Award for Fiction, which he was awarded again in 1997 for Father and Son. He has been a full-time writer since 1990 and is the author of four novels: Fay, Father and Son, Dirty Work and Joe; two collections of stories: Facing the Music and Big Bad Love; and a non-fiction account of his seventeen years as an Oxford firefighter, On Fire. He lives in Yocona, Mississippi, with his family.
Larry Brown was born in Oxford, Mississippi, in 1951. He is the recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Literature and the 1992 Southern Book Critics' Circle Award for Fiction, which he was awarded again in 1997 for Father and Son. He has been a full-time writer since 1990 and is the author of four novels: Fay, Father and Son, Dirty Work and Joe; two collections of stories: Facing the Music and Big Bad Love; and a non-fiction account of his seventeen years as an Oxford firefighter, On Fire. He lives in Yocona, Mississippi, with his family.
